Loosey Goosey

In the small town of McMinnville, Oregon resides a museum that houses one of the most famous planes ever built.  Not only is it monstrous, it was built in the 1940's and only flew one mile!  Yes, I said one mile.  

The Spruce Goose also goes by the name of the Flying Boat, and was built by Howard Hughes during the years of WWII.  It was built for the purpose of flying men and supplies over to support the war effort, but wasn't completed until after the war was over in 1946.

Here is the building that houses the Spruce Goose: 

 This gives you an idea of how large this plane actually is.  If you would drop this over the top of a football field, the wing spans would extend 10 feet over the edge.  Its tail is as tall as an 8 story building!  Not only is that mind boggling, but the plane's body is built out of wood, held together by a special laminating process invented by Howard Hughes.  Seven tons of nails were used during the building process, but once the glue set, they were removed.  The plane was stored for many decades in a special hanger built by Hughes, then moved to a spot near the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California before being shipped in pieces to this spot.

The museum houses many types of airplanes, helicopters and other items related to aviation.

Don is standing in front of a single engine British plane called the Vampire.  It looks like a toy sitting under the huge wing of the Spruce Goose.  This airplane was first flown in 1945, just before the end of WWII.  It did have some quirks: if the engine flared out, there was no ejection seat and no way to bail out.  You were toast.

Here is what the planes looked like when they first started using airplanes to haul mail.  At that time, it was a by guess and by golly system of navigation.  There was no GPS, and no highway system to get your bearings as to where you were, so the pilots had to do their best guess.

The P40 wears the Flying Tiger Paint scheme.

In another hanger, there is a large collection of space travel memorabilia.  There was a lot of information and pictures relating to travel into out space in the 1960's and 70's.  Included was a model of Sputnik, which was the first rocket shot into space by the Russians.  As Sandy and I looked up, we saw a guy (okay, he might have been a dummy) hanging in space directly overhead.  I could have sworn I saw him wave to us.....hmm....

The black spy plane seen below was called the Blackbird.  On July 28, 1976, it set a world speed record of 2,193 miles per hour!  Just think, you could start out in California, blink, and by the time you opened your eyes, you could be in Nevada!  Imagine the jet lag you would have by the end of a trip in this plane!  It could scan over 100,000 square miles of the earth's surface every hour. Totally amazing, even by today's standards.

Acknowledgements go to Sandy and Jerry White for taking all of these pictures (with their cell phones no less).  I did bring my camera along. However, that didn't do me any good since the SD memory card was still in my laptop after downloading the previous day's photos!  The gift shop had no SD cards, but had film to sell.  Who uses film nowadays???  Thanks again, Sandy & Jerry!